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DURHAM, N.C. Fake fingernails and clothing are the focus of new leads in the Duke University lacrosse rape case as investigators try to pin down whether any members of the team raped or assaulted a stripper at a party last month.
Meanwhile, a cab driver who took a since-arrested lacrosse player home from a team party the same night a woman claims she was raped says his passenger was calm and jovial. But the driver, Moez Mostafa, said a second passenger he picked up later was talking about a stripper in a tone that made it "look to me like somebody get hurt."
Lacrosse players Reade Seligmann and fellow sophomore Collin Finnerty were indicted Monday on charges of first-degree rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. Each posted $400,000 bond Tuesday and was released.
Defense attorneys have said they have time-stamped photos from the party, bank records, cell phone calls and the taxi driver's statement to support claim that Seligmann is innocent of raping the woman on the night of March 13.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192404,00.html
theHawk said:I haven't really been following this case. But I did see Jesse Jackson was in on it, someone tell me what the hell he has to do with any of this?
Sunday, October 08, 2006
The Effects of Corrupted Procedures
Flawed procedures beget flawed results, and massively flawed procedures beget massively flawed results. Thats the conclusion from what is the single most important article about the case to appear, under Joseph Neffs byline in this mornings N&O. Neffs work painstakingly explains why procedure matters, highlighting what I consider the single most stunning aspect of this casethat the district attorney of Durham County ordered the Durham Police Department to violate its own procedures in multiple ways for an April 4 lineup.
North Carolinas eyewitness ID policies were revolutionized by the recommended guidelines laid down by the Actual Innocence Commission (AIC) (on which, it should be noted, Professor James Coleman served), which grew out of a late 2002 initiative from former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverly Lake. The AIC urged, among other items:
* The individual conducting the photo or live lineup should not know the identity of the actual suspect, to avoid unintentional influences from those conducting the identification procedure.
* Witnesses should be instructed that the suspect may or may not be in the lineup.
* A minimum of eight photos (that of the suspect and seven fillers) should be used in photo identification procedures.
To determine the AICs effects, a few months ago I contacted sixteen police departments from around North Carolina, from cities and towns of various sizes. (Durhams policy, General Order 4077, had already been revealed in an N&O story.) Of the 17 departments, eight follow the AIC guidelines in their entirety, and a ninth is revising its guidelines to do so. Seven other departments, including Durham, use five fillers rather than seven, the recommended approach of the state Criminal Justice Academy. The 17th city, Wilmington, uses a unique hybrid structure, prepared by District Attorney Benjamin David, which offers the most due-process friendly procedure in the state.
This procedures employed in the lacrosse case deviate from statewide patterns in almost every respect. Indeed, Neff reveals that the two psychologists who advised the AIC described the handling of the lacrosse case as a case study in violating the Durham Police Departments policies.
This case began to go off the procedural rails from the start. On March 16, a first photo lineup occurred. In many ways, it conformed to Durhams policies: a neutral investigator (Clayton, rather than Gottlieb or Himan) conducted it, and it contained five filler photos per every suspect (lacrosse players named Bret, Adam, or Matt). For reasons that remain unclear, however, the Durham Police used photos of other lacrosse players as fillers. They should have used photos of players from other Duke teams; or of lacrosse players from other universities.
Weve known for some time that the accuser identified four players with 100% certainty, and said that she was 70% sure about Reade Seligmann. As Neffs article reveals, Claytons report was (deliberately?) unclear on what the accuser actually was identifying. Though forms prepared by Clayton listed asking the accuser only one questionwhether the person in the photograph sexually assaulted heraccording to Neff, Clayton claimed that these IDs related to a question of whether the accuser recognized people at the party.
Regardless, all four of these IDs, plus the partial ID of Seligmann, were of fillers, not of suspects. According to Durham and statewide procedures, this lineup should have been considered a failed onethe accuser not only couldnt identify any suspects, but actually identified filler photos.
Instead, Nifong essentially tossed out the results of the March 16 lineup. (There is nothing in Durhams rules, or the guidelines of any other North Carolina city that I examined, allowing police departments to conduct multiple lineups of the same suspects.) The rules for the new lineup, Nifong decided, would be different. In the first paragraph of Sergeant M.D. Gottliebs report for the April 4 lacrosse ID session, he wrote:
Mr. Nifong suggested we put together the mug shot type photographs [of the lacrosse players] into a group since we are under impression the players at the party are members of the Duke Lacrosse team and instead of doing a line up or a photographic array, we would merely ask the [alleged] victim to look at each picture and see if she recalled seeing the individuals at the party.
In contrast to the March 16 session, conducted by Clayton, the lead investigator, Gottlieb, would conduct the session, violating Durhams policy. Psychologist Gary Wells explains the reasons for the policy to Neff: when a person giving a test knows the answer, that person tends to influence the person taking the test. Gottlieb then began the 4-4 lineup by violating another aspect of Durhams policy, informing the accuser that she would only be seeing people we had reason to believe attended the party. (James Colemans powerful letter to the N&O argued that this decision effectively told the accuser that she could make no wrong choice.)
The accuser identified one person (Collin Finnerty) who she claimed attacked her in a variety of ways. (Finnerty, of course, bore no resemblance to the descriptions that the accuser gave initially, according to Inv. Himans handwritten notes from March 16.) Three others, she said, looked like people who might have attacked her. For reasons that Neff explains in todays N&O, Gottlieb treated each of these three partial IDs in very different ways.
He passed over the first partial ID quicklyin all likelihood, as Neff surmises, because the accusers identifying someone named Matt would have contradicted the alias theory to which Nifong was then attached. The second partial IDof Dave Evansled to the accuser saying Evans resembled her attacker, but the person who attacked her had a mustache (which Evans does not). Gottlieb then asked the accuser to give a percentage-wise estimate, something that he hadnt asked of the previous partial ID. (The accuser said she was 90% sure.) The third partial IDof Reade Seligmannbegan with the accuser saying he looked like one of the guys who assaulted me. Then, under follow-up questioning from Gottlieb, the accuser claimed that she was 100% sure. As far as we know, this one statement is the only evidence against Seligmann, who was video-taped at a Wachovia ATM a mile away at the time of the alleged crime.
These flawed proceduresas Neff reveals today for the first timeproduced results that were unreliable, quite apart from the botched IDs of the suspects. The accuser twice identified with 100% certainty a player who wasnt even in Durham on the night of the party. More than a dozen other players, Neff reveals, were recognized once but not twice by the accuser. She incorrectly identified the player who made the broomstick comment. And she seemed to identify a fourth attackeronly to be discouraged from moving forward by Gottlieb.
The Nifong-orchestrated photo ID deviates wildly from common North Carolina practice, in at least five ways:
1.) The basic debate in the state seems to revolve around showing five or seven filler photos, or developing a system thats even more respectful of due process (Wilmington). As far as I could determine, no North Carolina jurisdiction is it the policy to confine eyewitness ID sessions to suspects in the case.
2.) Every police department that communicated with me has a standard policyeither formal or informalof telling witnesses that the photo array might or might not include the suspect. As far as I could determine, in no North Carolina jurisdiction is it the practice, as was followed in this case, for the witness to be informed that the photo array would consist only of possible suspects.
3.) As far as I could determine, no North Carolina jurisdiction possesses a third identification procedure, one that can be used, to quote Gottliebs description of Nifongs words, instead of doing a line up or a photographic array.
4.) As far as I could determine, no North Carolina jurisdiction allows multiple lineups of the same suspects.
5.) Some district attorneys who communicated with me seemed to like the AIC guidelines; others werent particularly enthusiastic about them; others (like David) developed their own systems. But of those who said that they made recommendations to local law enforcement, all did so in favor of departments using fillers in photo ID sessions, not the reverse. And a district attorney setting policy for a specific eyewitness ID session is very unusual almost, from everything I could gather, unprecedented in North Carolina.
The lacrosse session also departed from the statewide norm (although here no unanimity exists) in having someone intimately involved with the investigation oversee the photo ID session.
When I teach courses in U.S. constitutional or political history, I work hard to show my students that procedure isnt bureaucracy; its due process. Neffs article demonstrating the point. By adopted a corrupted procedure and ordering the Durham Police Department to break its own rules, Nifong created a process that he knew would yield unreliable results. And he didnt seem to care. Thats abuse of power on a frightening scale.
10.16.06
Duke Rape Case: Skanks, Greed, and Shattered Lives
Ed Bradley and Reade SeligmannUpdate: Justice 4 Two Sisters, (former?) defender of the strippers, writes:
First, by this point Ive given up hope the childs [Kim Roberts] attorney, Mark Simeon, has any control of her wardrobe choices, with that skirt she was sporting slit up to her pelvic bone Secondly, the glibness of her responses sounded more like she was being grilled by a boyfriend about her whereabouts that night, rather than the facts in a felony sexual assault case Even though Ive defended her here, based on her actions, clearly the almighty dollar is what drives Ms. Kim to do anything.
60 Minutes the show that tried to pass off obviously phony documents critical of President George Bushs service in the National Guard as authentic, perpetrating a fraud on national television in order to help John Kerrys political aspiration to become president of the United States slightly redeemed itself last night.
Rather than playing hard left politics, the old dudes actually did what journalists are supposed to do: present facts to the American people. Host Ed Bradley said 60 Minutes examined the case file, and it raised concerns about the police who investigated the alleged gang-rape and Mike Nifong, the district attorney in charge of the flimsy case.
There wasnt much new information in last nights 60 Minutes segment, which featured second stripper and embezzler Kim Roberts and indicted-for-rape Duke lacrosse players David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty. For instance, the big news is that Roberts contradicted the stripper-accusers story, but weve known for months there were multiple versions floating around.
Heres what was new to me:
1) Two weeks after she supposedly was raped and sodomized, the stripper-accuser was taking off her clothes again for money. But I guess she had to eat and feed her children. Poor, oppressed stripper!
2) A Duke law professor named James Coleman (where has he been???) said the same thing about DA Mike Nifong that Ive been saying since April. Confident that the stripper-accusers gang-rape fantasy was real and certain that DNA would prove it, Nifong had to indict somebody, although the DNA results connected ZERO white lacrosse players to the stripper-accuser. Instead, the DNA found inside her belonged to her black boyfriend. Oops!
James Coleman Coleman, who I wished had spoken up sooner, said what people of average intelligence already knew: the photo identification process violated standard police procedure, local, state, and federal guidelines. The photo array was comprised of Duke lacrosse players and no fillers (non-lacrosse players). All the stripper-accuser had to do was point to three white faces.
And ruin three lives.
As Nifongs case collapsed, he came up with alternative theories about condom use. The stripper-accuser said no one used a condom during the alleged gang-rape and that somebody ejaculated inside her. Yet, to account for the embarrassing DNA results, Nifong continued to contradict his own witness!
What an utter doofus.
The stripper-accusers luck is as rotten as it can get. Not only did she make up a gang-rape story, she happened to blame it on the three people least likely to have done it! Seligmann has an alibi supported by a paper trail. He says he tried to tell the police and Nifong about it, but they refused to talk to him. Finnerty says he also has a provable alibi. Evans and the other two say they did nothing wrong. They werent even among the group that called Roberts a ******. Seligmann says he didnt say it and wont accept responsibility for others saying it.
Mike Nifong By the way, Roberts started the whole verbal exchange by calling one or more players small dick white boy(s). She whined, They could have said anything else. They could have said black but they said ******.
Thats a lot of nerve. Hitting below the belt and questioning a mans physical endowments, a very sensitive area to begin with, and Roberts is surprised the white boys retaliated and called her a ******?
All in all, Im glad the indicted men decided to go on national TV. I have problems with the left-leaning legacy media show, but they came down squarely on the side of fairness. Best of all, 60 Minutes acknowledged that Nifong played up the race angle and pandered to blacks. I gagged once or twice as Bradley kept referring to the strippers as dancers, but I got it under control eventually.
Wherever the false accuser is, I hope her conscience is eating her alive. Until she rectifies this mess, which means coming forward and confessing she made up the whole thing, and apologizing to Evans, Seligmann, and Finnerty, I hope she never has a moments peace. I hope her lies are taking a toll on her health. I hope the damage shes doing to innocent lives causes tenfold damage to her own.
If anyone out there still believes David Evans, Reade Seligmann, or Collin Finnerty raped a black stripper on March 13, 2006, youre willfully deaf and blind.
And stupid.
-
Previous posts: Ive been blogging about this case since April. If youre a new reader, browse at least a few of the 25 posts in the Duke Rape Case category before you comment.
Quick links: Nifong regrets early statements to the media; echos of Scottsboro; Nifong goes after bloggers; one damning motion after another; journalist calls lacrosse women ignorant for supporting the men; 1,300-discovery bolsters the defense; Duke president Richard Brodhead commissions a biased panel to issue a report; and Tawana Brawley redux.
Duke bloggers: John in Carolina, The Johnsville News, Lie Stoppers, Durham-in-Wonderland, Crystal Mess
Other sources:
* Duke and the Death of Academe commentary
* Duke Three End Silence
* Duke players say lives ruined over rape case
* Duke cases new claims
* Suspects, dancer contradict accuser
Posted by La Shawn @ 6:59 am
I saw the 60 mins. program last night on this, if true the DA should go to jail.
I saw the 60 mins. program last night on this, if true the DA should go to jail.
I saw the 60 mins. program last night on this, if true the DA should go to jail.
I saw it too. The phrase "Hangins too good for that varmint" comes to mind. Honestly, I don;t know how he sleeps at night.
Lawyers: DNA Not Linked to Duke Athletes
Dec 13 4:09 PM US/Eastern
By DAVID SCOTT
Associated Press Writer
RALEIGH, N.C.
DNA testing in the Duke lacrosse rape case found genetic material from several males in the accuser's body and her underwear _ but none from any team member, defense attorneys said in court papers Wednesday.
The papers were filed by attorneys for the three lacrosse players charged, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans. They complained that the information about DNA from other men was not disclosed in a report prosecutors provided earlier this year to the defense.
The testing was conducted at a private laboratory for the prosecution.
"This is strong evidence of innocence in a case in which the accuser denied engaging in any sexual activity in the days before the alleged assault, told police she last had consensual sexual intercourse a week before the assault, and claimed that her attackers did not use condoms and ejaculated," the defense said.
In an interview, defense attorney Joseph Cheshire said the findings suggest the accuser had sex shortly before the March team party where she was hired to perform as a stripper. The woman has said three lacrosse team members gang-raped her in a bathroom at the party.
District Attorney Mike Nifong did not immediately return a call for comment.
The trial is not expected to start until the spring.
You know what absolutely kills me? This woman, who was a stripper, and found that night with the DNA of several different men in 'various' orifices, none of which was a match for her so-called boyfriend, was described by her cousin in an interview as having been in a "committed relationship" at the time of the alleged rape. There ain't no truth left, folks.
Bold Prediction - Duke Case To Be Dropped On/By Feb 5
Having read through the NY Times account of their interview with DA Mike Nifong, I Boldly predict that Mr. Nifong is planning to drop the remaining charges against the Duke Three at the Feb 5 hearing, or before. Here is the key excerpt:
Mr. Nifong declined interview requests Friday, but said in an e-mail message that his decision to dismiss the rape charges showed he was willing to go in whatever direction the evidence takes me. And in a three-hour interview on Thursday, Mr. Nifong said he would not hesitate to drop all the charges if the accuser expressed doubt about the identity of the men she has accused when she sees all three defendants at a pretrial hearing set for February.
If she came in and said she could not identify her assailants, then we dont have a case, Mr. Nifong said. On the other hand, he continued, If she says, yes, its them, or one or two of them, I have an obligation to put that to a jury.
...
Although the woman identified three lacrosse players as her rapists from an array of photographs, Mr. Nifong said she would get a better look at them at the pretrial hearing in February. You cant always tell from a photograph, he said, adding, The only real time that youre able to say if you have a misidentification is to put the person in the courtroom with the other people.
Mr. Nifong said he intends to ask the woman about her level of certitude after Februarys hearing. Its an opportunity to say, Yes, Im 100 percent certain these are the people who did it, he said. Its also an opportunity to express doubt. Given the absence of physical evidence, he said, any doubts from the woman could end the prosecution for one or more of the defendants.
As KC Johnson notes, Nifong does not have any obligation at all to present the latest iteration of the accuser's story to a jury. And honestly - if she says "yes, its... one or two of them", how can he possibly go to trial after her conclusive ID of all three? A summary of her effort to date with the photo ID process is already crippling to her credibility. And considering how many times the photos of these three have been printed and aired, if she wavers in an identification it is because she wants to waver (or Nifong wants her too). But here is a helpful hint for the courtroom appearance - the three younger, athletic looking men at the defense table are the accused; the older folks are attorneys (Hey - unless the defense puts a few fillers at the table, or some athletic associates).
Setting that aside, this excerpt reads to me like Nifong had an interview with some sympathetic Times reporters and began laying the groundwork for his eventual surrender.
And why would he do that? There may be several small benefits to Nifong if he collapses the case on his own initiative. First, if he announces during the Feb 5 hearing that, due to newly-discovered uncertainty by the accuser, the remaining charges must be dropped, then the judge will not have to rule formally on the question of whether Mike Nifong orchestrated a photo ID process that was flawed. Keeping such a ruling out of the record may be of small help in a civil suit or disbarment proceeding.
And in a similar vein, by throwing in the case himself Nifong can argue that he has been acting in good faith and simply tried to give his witness her day in court. Again, that is not much, but a little show of belated reasonableness may look better than having the judge formally throw out the photo IDs, thereby forcing Nifong to drop the case unwillingly.
I am convinced that at this point Nifong is simply looking for a resolution that does not include his eventual disbarment and a hefty civil suit against Durham. A long excerpt about his precarious legal situation is here.
Other Bold Predictions are welcome in the comments.
COMEDY CLASSIC:
On Thursday, Mr. Nifong acknowledged knowing about those [DNA] test results before any players were indicted last spring. He also acknowledged that the results were relevant and potentially exculpatory, and he said he should have given the results to the defense before May 18, the day he signed a filing that said the state is not aware of any additional material or information which may be exculpatory in nature.
But Mr. Nifong denied the defense teams contention that he had deliberately tried to hide the results or delay their release. Mr. Nifong, who is personally overseeing this case, said that given the volume of evidence he had not realized that he had failed to turn over those specific DNA test results. That wasnt something I was concentrating on, he said.
Don't let the DNA results distract you, Mike! Focus on the big picture, not pesky details.
Posted by Tom Maguire on December 23, 2006
